08.16.10: dinner/tapas (la tortilla de patatas y gazpacho).

Gazpacho y una tortilla de patatas

This meal started out with the best of intentions: we were going to be arriving home from Pennsylvania earlier that day, we had a delivery coming from Fresh Direct with most of the week’s groceries and all I had to worry about was the impending drive to work the following morning. A quick perusal on Serious EatsThursday morning had put me face-to-face with a delectable-looking tortilla, so I had decided then and there that we would enjoy the Spanish staple Monday night thinking it would simple, fun and a break from all of the heavy food we had over the weekend. Ensuring that we had all of the ingredients readily available, save perhaps having to run downstairs to pick up some extra eggs I thought I’d make gazpacho, we’d have a little wine and perhaps some cheese and we would toast to making it to and from Pennsylvania by car (our first major car trip in the last year) no worse for the wear.

Did that happen? Well…sort of.Our trips down there and back were uneventful, but we were dealt with a very unpleasant surprise in the form of a busted water pump that came to the fore during my car’s inspection and had to be fixed. Unpleasant and expensive repairs are never fun to deal with, but it had to be done. Pushing my nephew around in the pool along with some excellent birthday dinners did much to soothe me…but trust in that I will never plan to get a car inspected on a Friday the 13th ever again.

Monday night’s dinner was also something of a mixed bag: while the gazpacho was great (and made even better thanks to an impulsive purchase of pimenton de la vera a few weeks ago), the tortilla did not flip. It turned into a mess. We’re pretty sure that we didn’t use enough eggs as specified in the recipe (and probably should have used that cast iron pan that we have yet to season), so it ended up looking very ugly indeed.

What’s funny is that this was not our first attempt at a tortilla de patatas; you might recall back in the wintertime we tried out Feran Adria’s potato-chip version to a high degree of success but that recipe did not require a flip to finish it as it was instead placed under the broiler, fritatta-like,

Fortunately, it was delicious, so in the end we were able to clink our little wine glasses to a mostly-successful road trip and have enough leftover for us to both make toasted tortillas bocadillos (cold tortilla sandwiched between two slices of toast),

Where in PA? That’s where I am unfortunately situated. Well, culinarily unfortunate although a 2000 square foot cabin on a lake in the woods isn’t that bad…

Your gazpacho post reminded me a bit of mine. I had some bruschetta topping that was on the brink of going bad so I whipped it up with some garlic vinegar, lime juice, olive oil, white wine and a bit-o-cream and chilled. it was pretty good and oh so easy.